A HARROWING play about domestic violence will go on a national tour . . . after victims of abuse were so moved by the production.
Audiences wept openly when There’s No Excuse was staged at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal in April.
THOUGHT-PROVOKING: past and present cast members in a promotional picture for the play. Photograph: Copyright acknowledged.
The play vividly depicts rape, battery and harassment and different people’s experience of domestic violence.
The drama was the brainchild of former Newcastle College student Gavin Ampleford. The 22-year old, now of Crossley Terrace, Fenham, Newcastle, said: “I want to make a difference through drama and performance.
“I’ve done my job if I inspire at least one person to get out.”
Gavin himself plays several roles in the production including a homosexual boy who gets beaten up, a dad who rapes his daughter, and a stand-up comedian.
The Arts Council has offered £18,000 to get the play on the road. Another £2,000 is needed before it hits theatres across Britain.
The cast were made up of current and former drama students at Newcastle College.
Gavin’s mum – Jackie Lauder, of East Kilbride, near Glasgow – was in the audience when the play was staged in Newcastle.
She said: “I’ve always been very proud of Gavin and when he left to go to Newcastle to do a degree I was even more so. The production was deeply moving and very powerful.”
Also in the audience was Sue Poole, a domestic violence consultant.
HARROWING: Actress Meghan Doyle in make-up. Photograph: Copyright acknowledged.
She said: “The production had such an impact on me. This was because the director had used all of the behaviours and tactics that perpetrators use to have power and control over another person, be they in a partnership, marriage or single sex relationship.
“I would love to see this production tour wide and far so that victims may have an opportunity to see that they are not the only ones suffering and that there is help out there.”
Jessica Little, 27, of Crossley Terrace, Fenham – who plays a rape victim in the production – said: “It’s been a definite journey for all of us.”
(This story was first published, with an incorrect by-line, in the print edition of the Newcastle based Sunday Sun on 10 October 2010.)